It involves identifying a business need for a solution, and is enabled by modeling, simulating, monitoring and managing the efficiency of this solution. Having, and USING tools that help discover, analyze, modify and manage these business processes enables continuous improvement – it is an iterative process that looks for improvements and adaptability as the needs of the business change.
Once a Model is generated, simulation for best / worst case scenarios help determine the best path to a greater return on investment (ROI). Simulating different scenarios, refining and monitoring results allows for flexibility and a better understanding of the impact of process improvements, before implementing them in a production environment, enables a huge cost-saving.
BPM should be business-driven – one designed and analyzed by a business analyst and key business stake-holders, namely line-of-business managers.
Information Technology is a critical partner that needs to do the technical work of integrating the solution with the technology-infrastructure it has! In effect, IT-personnel need to work with business-stakeholders and refine processes for deployment. IT would be responsible for installing and configuring the solution.
BPM is associated with the life cycle of a business process and involves identifying and improving processes that deliver business capability, to deploying and managing the process when it is operational.
Often, managing process performance is forgotten, after implementation!
To manage a business-process, one must have visibility into process performance. When a process does not meet goals/requirements, it is time to get back into the life cycle and identify the cause, AND look for improvement.
BPM Success is characterized by:
- How easy it is to modify a solution, without massive effort … choices made today should not limit the choices that need to be made in the future.
- Decisions are made constantly, and influenced by various factors – Business needs to have a dynamic policy that can harness and manage changes on the fly.
- Flexibility by way of sharing information, eliminating duplication and silos of ‘departmental’ information … enables efficiencies and business insight across the organization.
- IT should have the tools that can assemble solutions based on reusable assets, minimal coding, integrated testing and deployment capability. Solutions are required PRONTO! Or else, the opportunity is lost.
- Striking a right balance between Line-of-Business/Subject-Matter-Expert and IT is paramount! LOB writes the specification for the solution and IT ensures that it is tested, deployed and implemented.
In effect, LOB facilitates defining business processes and seeing the business results (in real time), are in-sync … resulting in better business insight.
